The Last Thread
by Rose Lupus
Summary: After the call, Jane races to save Lisbon from Red John. Post 6x01 snippets.
1. The Last Thread

**A/N: **Yet another 6x01 tag, because Bruno Heller is an evil, evil, brilliant man, and this is my only catharsis until next Sunday. fk.

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"I'm sorry, Patrick. Teresa can't come to the phone right now. Can I take a message?"

That familiar, deceptively placid voice shot through Jane's heart. It took him a second to understand that this voice wasn't coming from inside his head; it was not the familiar whisper of a guilty conscience or one of the many nightmarish flickers of his vivid imagination or memory. One second before a wave of nausea so strong it rocked him back on his feet came rolling through and the colours of the world around him started fading to an all-encompassing grey.

Before he could even fully grasp the horror he was feeling, the voice spoke again. Red John's voice. Jane's mind conjured up the image of a half congealed droplet of blood slowly tracking down a white wall.

"No?" the killer spoke again from Lisbon's phone, "I'll let her know you called."

Her. Lisbon. He had_ her_. Finally Jane regained enough function to gasp a word.

"Wait –"

The harsh tone blaring in his ear that he was too late felt like a solid blow to the face. That blow knocked the air from his lungs and the warmth from his body. It was happening again – his life was crashing down around his ears with nothing that mattered left to support it. He was suddenly hit by the agonising realisation of exactly how much this mattered. How much she mattered.

For a moment in time he was frozen in place, so many different emotions pulling at him that he couldn't feel a single one. And then they galvanised into a single feeling – fear. Fear of losing her. It swelled up into his chest until he felt like he would explode if he didn't move, and then it propelled him to the team, to Grace. Words fell from his mouth sounding incongruently calm to his ears, and he watched the panic in their eyes from a distance.

He clung desperately to the hope that he hadn't yet killed her, that he wasn't going to find her bloody and cold on the floor beneath the same cruel smile that had mocked his grief a decade before. A bitter chill took over his heart and a dreadful stillness filled his mind as he took a seat in a black SUV that took him speeding towards an answer. They shadowed over that small, foolish hope, suffocating it.

All he could hear were Red John's word's echoing in his ears. He gripped the door as his mind conjured up nightmarish visions and silently urged the vehicle to go even faster. Even if it took him to her body; to the destruction of the last thread holding him together in some semblance of humanity, he needed to find her.


	2. Falling Apart

By the time the car stopped, Jane was already out the door slipping through the gathering collection of law enforcement. An ambulance stopped suddenly to avoid hitting him as he rushed in front of it in his blinkered haste. Someone shouted angry words he didn't have time for at him as he slipped past them into the wretched old house. As quickly as blinking he found himself at the entrance to a room busy with activity.

An armoured man brushed passed him, calling the room clear. He noticed Jane, but before he could protest, Jane flashed his identification at him and distractedly told him he was with the CBI. His eyes were already searching the shadowed room; searching for her. His eyes hooked on a body crumpled on the floor and he was paralysed. Suddenly the room was lit – someone had brought a torch, not that Jane cared at this point. The light directed at the body and Jane could see her loosely curled brown hair spilling across the floor, her head tilted unnaturally towards the entrance of the room and her face…..

Jane didn't notice himself moving across the room, didn't feel the impact of his knees on the bare floorboards as he dropped heavily to the ground, wasn't aware of the tears falling to join them. Her face was a pale background to that bright red of the blood marring her beautiful face. Death painted across her lips like lipstick, but in the exaggerated grin of a psychotic clown. Her eyes were closed as if in sleep, just as his daughters had been. A horrible choking, wailing kind of noise erupted in the room as Jane pulled her body to himself that he could no longer recognise as his own voice.


	3. Coming Together

Lisbon lolled helplessly in his arms like a broken doll, and he supported her head and cuddled her close like she was a newborn child. The grief ripping through him was like a white hot knife and he shook against the pain it left behind. It cleared his head purified his thought down to this one moment, this one terrible moment. The smell of musty wood and dusty air mixed with the metallic tang of blood imprinted in his mind. He felt the uneven boards of the floor digging into his knees and was acutely aware the weight in his arms, how small she felt and how easily her arm flopped when he let it go.

He bowed his head and dropped it upon her head in defeat. A hand clasped upon his shoulder but he shook it away violently. He wanted neither comfort nor to be separated from her. He sobbed into her hair without restraint as the details of this; his worst nightmare assaulted him with their vividness, their reality. The brush of each strand of her hair against his, the stickiness of the blood on her cheek staining his chin, the slight puff of warmth against his neck, the –

Jane froze.

The warmth flowed over his skin again, and he pulled back to look at Lisbon's face and he focused in like a microscope on the slight parting of her lips as another breath slipped past them. Two more slow, shallow breaths, and the recognition of the warmth of her body almost convinced him. He placed a shaking hand across her chest and when he felt her beating her beating heart he choked on another sob. His hand ran away over his skin as he frantically searched her for wounds. He felt her neck for a slit throat, her wrists and arms for the cuts that had been inflicted on his precious wife, her belly, her back.

Nothing. Not a cut, not scratch. The blood wasn't hers. His eyes finally lifted from Lisbon and he finally noticed the second body in the room: Partridge, a pool of darkened blood surrounding him, the gash through his throat obvious. Jane startled and pulled Lisbon with him as he shuffled urgently away from the corpse.

The hand returned, and this time Jane looked to see one of a pair of paramedics standing over him with questioning looks in their eyes. He stared at them blankly before the only words he could fathom at that moment burst from him.

"She's alive."

He repeated himself, maybe more than once, because the words sounded truer the more he heard them. They tried to take her from him then, he clung to his lifeline until they decided to work around him with their stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs and murmured numbers. In the end they bundled them both into the ambulance as he clung to her arm. The younger medic handed him a wad of soaked gauze, and he spent the trip to the hospital gently, meticulously cleaning the blood from her face until not one speck of that face remained upon hers.


	4. Never Again

**A/N:** M7007, here is that scene you requested. ;-)

The next ep is coming guys! Not much longer now. I can only hope they give us something like I have been imagining.

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Jane sat by Lisbon's bed, repetitively stroking the back of the small hand he held in his own, willing her to wake. He wasn't sure when he'd started doing it, but he found it calming, and god knows he needed all the calming he could get right now. Lisbon had yet to wake, and they'd been at the hospital for almost an hour. The doctor who had assessed her when they first arrived had returned and frowned when she found her patient still unconscious and ordered another blood test.

When Jane had asked her what was wrong, the doctor told him she suspected that in addition to being tasered Lisbon had been dosed with a powerful sedative by someone who either didn't know or care what dosage to use. Jane had felt a rush of impotent fury at this idea. The doctor saw the look on his face and touched his shoulder comfortingly before assuring him that his wife would be closely watched and well looked after. She just needed some more time to work the drug out of her system.

Someone somewhere along the line had assumed they were married. It was an easy mistake to make with Jane's obvious distress at her condition and familiarity with her allergies and other details. He had also unwittingly been covering her bare ring finger with his own left hand. Jane hadn't bothered to correct the convenient misconception that allowed him to stay by her side and hear updates on her condition.

Since then, Jane had sat in the fluorescently lit emergency department room rubbing patterns on Lisbon's hand and half listening to the regular beeps of the medical machinery clustered around her bed. Lisbon's warm hand in his reminded him that she was alive, but his mind kept straying to the image of her lying on those dusty floor boards with Red John's signature finger-painted on her face. The feelings he'd had when he had thought her lost in the same way as his family haunted him until he felt Lisbon's hand flex briefly around his fingers.

Startled, he straightened his slumped posture and fixed his attention on her face, looking for any signs that she was awakening.

"Teresa?" he spoke hopefully.

Her hand fluttered in his again and she took a deep breath. She shifted in the hospital cot uncomfortably before her eyes slowly opened. She blinked sleepily at him and he couldn't help but grin in response.

"Jane?" She whispered his name hoarsely.

"Yes?"

"There's… blood. On your face," she said groggily.

She reached out shakily to brush her fingertips against his chin. Jane quickly grabbed her hand back and wiped vigorously at the spot she'd indicated with his sleeve. Lisbon was startled by the quick movement.

"What…?" She asked, still confused.

Before she could even finish the question though, the memories rushed back and her eyes widened with realisation.

"Partridge. Red John!"

She sat up suddenly and grabbed the railing of the bed, and then her head because the movement made her head spin and brought on a massive, throbbing headache.

"Woah, woah!" Jane cautioned her, and jumped from his seat to prevent her from trying to get out of the bed and pulling out her IV line or dislodging the wires monitoring her heart rhythm.

He wrapped his arms and held her still.

"It's ok. You're ok. Don't try to get up, you need to stay in bed."

"Jane!" She started to protest, but Jane muffled her protest by hug her more tightly against him.

"Don't worry. We know. Everything's being taken care of."

"He was _there,_ Jane. He grabbed me. He was right behind me and I didn't even see him. " Lisbon's voice shook as she spoke this time. The fear in her voice stung him.

"I know. I'm sorry." Jane replied quietly. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. "But you're okay. You're safe now."

Lisbon said nothing in response, but he felt a little of the tension fade from her body, and after a moment, her arms crept up and wrapped around his waist.

"You're okay," he repeated to himself and rocked back and forth ever so slightly with her.

He savoured the feeling of holding her and knowing she was alive. In that moment he silently promised himself he would do anything to keep her from harm. Red John would never lay his hands on her again.


End file.
